tags: #apache #apache2 #virtual #hosts #virtual-hosts #virtualhosts
This [page at digitalocean](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-apache-virtual-hosts-on-ubuntu-20-04)

This [stackoverflow question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31504003/apache-virtual-hosts-not-working-as-expected) contains something important that *isn't obvious* and would take a lot of doc-diving to find. The [TL;DR]() is that **apache2 uses the **`ServerName`** directive to distinguish virtual hosts, not the [FQDN]() at the top.**

If you have some virtual hosts whose config looks like:
```plaintext
<VirtualHost *:80>
...
  ServerName myserver1
```
but **you have at least one config that looks like:**
```plaintext
<VirtualHost server2:80>
...
  ServerName server2
```
then **the non-wildcard config takes precedence over all the wildcard hosts**. So for every virtual host, apache2 stops with the first `<VirtualHost server2:80>` that matches the incoming server address. So e.g. if in your hosts you have
```
127.0.0.1 myserver1 server2
```
then the `<VirtualHost server2:80>` will match for anything local. Thus you must make sure that the top line of **every** config is of the form
```
<VirtualHost *:80>
```
as **even a single config that is not **`*:80`** will screw things up**.